Unrwa At 70

Exploring the evolution of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), this book fills a lacuna in literature on the agency. UNRWA and Palestinian Refugees employs recent fieldwork in order to analyse challenges in programmes and service delivery, protection, camp governance, community participation, and camp improvement and reconstruction. The chapters examine the way UNRWA is adapting to a changing social, political and economic context, mostly within urban settings – a paradigmatic shift from understanding the Agency’s role as simply a provider of relief and services to one comprehensively supporting the human development of Palestinian refugees. Examining the refugee debate using new disciplines and research frameworks, this collection aims to emphasise the centrality of the Palestinian refugee issue for Middle East peace-making and to contribute a better understanding of a unique agency. This book will be a useful aid for students and researchers with an interest in Middle East Studies, Politics, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Two prominent Israeli liberals argue that for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians to end with peace, Palestinians must come to terms with the fact that there will be no "right of return." In 1948, seven hundred thousand Palestinians were forced out of their homes by the first Arab-Israeli War. More than seventy years later, most of their houses are long gone, but millions of their descendants are still registered as refugees, with many living in refugee camps. This group—unlike countless others that were displaced in the aftermath of World War II and other conflicts—has remained unsettled, demanding to settle in the state of Israel. Their belief in a "right of return" is one of the largest obstacles to successful diplomacy and lasting peace in the region. In The War of Return, Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf—both liberal Israelis supportive of a two-state solution—reveal the origins of the idea of a right of return, and explain how UNRWA - the very agency charged with finding a solution for the refugees - gave in to Palestinian, Arab and international political pressure to create a permanent “refugee” problem. They argue that this Palestinian demand for a “right of return” has no legal or moral basis and make an impassioned plea for the US, the UN, and the EU to recognize this fact, for the good of Israelis and Palestinians alike. A runaway bestseller in Israel, the first English translation of The War of Return is certain to spark lively debate throughout America and abroad.

As the Kadi-hype following the 2008 European Court of Justice judgment demonstrated, there are many problems associated with the judicial review of acts of international organizations. This book is the first to present a broader overview of how acts of international organizations have been challenged before national courts. It covers such diverse organizations as the United Nations, its subsidiary organs, such as the specialized international criminal courts for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the European Patent Office, the European Schools, EUROCONTROL, OPEC, and INTERPOL Building extensively on the case law of domestic courts, the chapters highlight reoccurring legal issues in light of four working hypotheses. These relate to the nature of judicial review of the acts of international organizations, its interdependence with domestic methods of incorporating international law, the conditions of a human rights-based review, and the tension between the independent functioning of an organization and guaranteeing legal protection against its acts. This approach ensures consistency among the book's chapters, which each focus on a different organization. Its conclusion brings the different findings together and analyses them in the light of the working hypotheses. It also discusses whether attempts to secure a certain minimum level of legal protection against acts of international organizations through judicial review by national courts may contribute to securing greater accountability of international organizations.

The Index to Proceedings of the General Assembly is a bibliographic guide to the proceedings and documentation of the General Assembly. This issue covers the seventieth session of the Assembly including its Main and ad hoc committees. The Index is prepared by the Dag Hammarskjöld Library, Department of Public Information, as one of the products of the United Nations Bibliographic Information System (UNBIS).